Re: [PATCH 2/2] schemas: i2c: Introduce I2C bus extensions

Rob Herring
2025-04-01T14:03:36Z

On Tue, Apr 1, 2025 at 3:11 AM Herve Codina <herve.codina@bootlin.com> wrote:
>
> An I2C bus can be wired to the connector and allows an add-on board to
> connect additional I2C devices to this bus.
>
> Those additional I2C devices could be described as sub-nodes of the I2C
> bus controller node however for hotplug connectors described via device
> tree overlays there is additional level of indirection, which is needed
> to decouple the overlay and the base tree:
>
> --- base device tree ---
>
> i2c1: i2c@abcd0000 {
> compatible = "xyz,i2c-ctrl";
> i2c-bus-extension@0 {

What does 0 represent? Some fake I2C address?

Why do you even need a child node here?

> i2c-bus = <&i2c_ctrl>;
> };
> ...
> };
>
> i2c5: i2c@cafe0000 {
> compatible = "xyz,i2c-ctrl";
> i2c-bus-extension@0 {
> i2c-bus = <&i2c-sensors>;
> };
> ...
> };
>
> connector {
> i2c_ctrl: i2c-ctrl {
> i2c-parent = <&i2c1>;
> #address-cells = <1>;
> #size-cells = <0>;
> };
>
> i2c-sensors {
> i2c-parent = <&i2c5>;
> #address-cells = <1>;
> #size-cells = <0>;
> };
> };
>
> --- device tree overlay ---
>
> ...
> // This node will overlay on the i2c-ctrl node of the base tree
> i2c-ctrl {
> eeprom@50 { compatible = "atmel,24c64"; ... };
> };
> ...
>
> --- resulting device tree ---
>
> i2c1: i2c@abcd0000 {
> compatible = "xyz,i2c-ctrl";
> i2c-bus-extension@0 {
> i2c-bus = <&i2c_ctrl>;
> };
> ...
> };
>
> i2c5: i2c@cafe0000 {
> compatible = "xyz,i2c-ctrl";
> i2c-bus-extension@0 {
> i2c-bus = <&i2c-sensors>;
> };
> ...
> };
>
> connector {
> i2c-ctrl {
> i2c-parent = <&i2c1>;
> #address-cells = <1>;
> #size-cells = <0>;
>
> eeprom@50 { compatible = "atmel,24c64"; ... };
> };
>
> i2c-sensors {
> i2c-parent = <&i2c5>;
> #address-cells = <1>;
> #size-cells = <0>;
> };
> };
>
> Here i2c-ctrl (same goes for i2c-sensors) represent the part of I2C bus
> that is on the hot-pluggable add-on. On hot-plugging it will physically
> connect to the I2C adapter on the base board. Let's call the 'i2c-ctrl'
> node an "extension node".
>
> In order to decouple the overlay from the base tree, the I2C adapter
> (i2c@abcd0000) and the extension node (i2c-ctrl) are separate nodes.
>
> The extension node is linked to the I2C bus controller in two ways. The
> first one with the i2c-bus-extension available in I2C controller
> sub-node and the second one with the i2c-parent property available in
> the extension node itself.
>
> The purpose of those two links is to provide the link in both direction
> from the I2C controller to the I2C extension and from the I2C extension
> to the I2C controller.

Why do you need both directions? An i2c controller can search the tree
for i2c-parent and find the one's that belong to it. Or the connector
can register with the I2C controller somehow.

Rob